Football Group Calls For Stricter Eligibility Requirements

In an effort to raise the academic quality of college athletes, the
College Football Association (cfa) has designed proposals to tighten
eligibility requirements for awarding college athletic scholarships to
high-school students.

The cfa--comprising 60 colleges and universities with football
programs in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association
(ncaa), excluding the schools in the Pacific 10 and Big 10
conferences--devised two proposals to be considered as new legislation
by the ncaa at its convention next January.

Last month, a group known as the "Georgia Seminar"--including
university presidents and such prominent college coaches as
Pennsylvania State University football coach Joe Paterno and Indiana
University basketball coach Bobby Knight--drafted similar proposals
that will also be introduced at the ncaa conference. And these have
been endorsed by the athletic directors of the Atlantic Coast
Conference.

The most stringent of the cfa proposals were devised by the faculty
representatives' group within the cfa (there are also a coaches' group
and an athletic directors' group). They would require that student
athletes meet the following requirements in high school in order to be
eligible for athletic scholarships:

Four years of English, including one year of composition.

Two years of mathematics, including one year of algebra.

Three years of social science.

Two years of natural science, including one year of laboratory
science.

Four years of additional coursework drawn from the above subjects or
from the subjects of foreign languages, computer science, and
speech.

In addition, the students must graduate from high school with an
overall grade-point average (gpa) of 2.0 on a scale of 4.0.

The faculty-generated proposals also suggest that a committee be
established to work with testing-service officials "to try to develop
an achievement test that could be used in connection with initial
eligibility in some way," according to Charles Neinas, executive
director of the cfa

Some college athletics officials argue that the standardized
achievement tests currently used discriminate against black
students.

Less stringent proposals, proposed by the athletic directors within
the group, would require three years of English, two of mathematics, an
overall gpa of 2.0, and an American College Testing Program (act)
examination score of 15, or a combined Scholastic Achievement Test
(sat) score of 700.

(The average sat score in 1981 was 890, according to the Educational
Testing Service, which administers the tests.)

Either set of proposals, if passed, would not go into effect until
the 1985-86 academic year, to give high schools more "lead time," Mr.
Neinas said, to prepare for the new requirements.

The ncaa currently only requires scholarship recipients to have an
overall grade-point average of 2.0 upon graduation from high
school.

Various proposals to bolster academic standards for athletes who are
entering college with scholarship aid have failed.

David Berst, director of enforcement for the ncaa, says the matter
has received continuing attention since 1973, when the "1.600 rule" was
dropped and replaced with the 2.0 gpa requirement.

Mr. Berst described the "1.600 rule" as a "complicated" method that
combined high-school gpa, precollege achievement-test scores, and class
rank.

"Over the years, [the 2.0 rule] has been considered a lower
standard," Mr. Berst said.

A proposal called the "triple option" failed to win the approval of
the ncaa on two separate occasions, Mr. Neinas said. Under it, students
would have had to meet one of three requirements: a 2.25 gpa, a score
of 750 on the sat, or 17 on the act

At the ncaa convention in last January, a proposal was defeated that
would have denied a student his first year of collegiate competition
unless he had a 2.5 high-school gpa

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